ACROSS 1 Seize 6 Just slightly 10 Lip-__ 14 Justice nominated by Barack 15 Buddy, in slang 16 Secure with lines 17 Cut most likely to win a BBQ competition? 19 TT automaker 20 Part of 21 Feminine side 22 Keyboard shortcuts 24 TV scientist with 19 Emmys 25 Keurig coffee for the big day? 27 Tear drier 29 Richmond-to- D.C. direction 30 Hunk’s pride 31 Finishes second 34 Deli order 35 Rental to get the twins to college? 38 Word before or after pack 39 Nearly 40 Asian New Year 41 Harmless cyst 43 They’re tossed up before they’re made 47 Sports competitions in anti-gravity? 51 Uganda’s Amin 52 Ciudad Juárez neighbor 53 It’s crude, then refined 54 Bit of cabinet hardware 55 Money box 56 Ring up a short story writer? 59 Bering Sea barker 60 Impromptu modern group pic 61 King Triton’s mermaid daughter 62 Poet __ St. Vincent Millay 63 Boys, to men 64 Commencement celebrants DOWN 1 Org. that makes cents 2 Woody’s wife 3 Repeals 4 It meant nothing to Edith Piaf 5 Buddy 6 Chicago 7 first name 7 Rodeo bucker 8 Writer/illustrator Falconer known for “Olivia” children’s books 9 Stan “__” Musial 10 Big wet one 11 “I’m not making that decision” 12 “For sure!” 13 Baked fruit desserts 18 Rare blood designation 23 Dogfish Head brew 25 “Star Trek” role for Takei and Cho 26 “To recap ... ” 28 Pick out of a crowd 32 Bell tower sound 33 Long fish 34 Secretary of Agriculture under Nixon 35 Smartphone arrangement 36 “Knock on wood” 37 Craigslist caveat 38 Wrote back 40 Fly around the equator? 41 Actor Bentley 42 It included a sweet, not sorrowful, parting 44 Sunflower relative 45 Doted on 46 Delphic diviners 48 Lily plant 49 “Not __!” 50 Cock and bull 54 Broadway’s Walter __ Theatre 57 Classified ad shorthand for “seeking” 58 Folklore crone By Ed Sessa ©2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC 10/05/17 10/05/17 ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: RELEASE DATE– Thursday, October 5, 2017 Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis xwordeditor@aol.com J O I N D A I L Y A R T S P L E A S E UNIVERSAL PICTURES ‘American Made’ bores You may not know the name Barry Seal, but you know his story. You know Pablo Escobar, the Iran-Contra Affair, American paternalism towards Central America. You know the American Dream. “American Made” tells a story not so much based on, but rather loosely inspired by, Seal’s life, who, as depicted in the film, was a commercial pilot-turned-CIA operative (Tom Cruise, “The Mummy”) tasked with taking aerial photographs of communists in Nicaragua, then with delivering captured Russian arms to the Contras in Honduras, who then became a drug runner for the Medellín Cartel in Colombia (serving a young Pablo Escobar). He was punished by the U.S. government not with prison but with a promotion, assigned to manufacture and capture evidence that the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua were working in the drug trade with the Medellín Cartel. It was the ’80s. And it was crazy. And the film knows it. It draws heavily from its predecessors — black comedies that highlight episodes in capitalist power and collapse in recent history, like “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “The Big Short”— and appropriates the bombastic narrator, who addresses the audience with a sly satisfaction and promises if not warns that everything you see really happened. That’s good enough for Cruise, whose recent roles (the last five of which are three different franchises and two science fiction action films) read more like the bad side of a big studio contract than a quality film guide. He’s in a different mode here (and, to note, at $50 million, which is no small amount, this is the tightest budget of a Cruise movie in ten years). He’s got the charisma, sure, but at the film’s key moments, for better or worse (and it’s often the latter), Cruise seems locked into one emotion: effortless cool, yet astonished and bewildered. Every crest has a trough, and Cruise doesn’t sufficiently dive into depths of paranoia and despair that defines his life after his CIA career in the film’s denouement. If there are other characters, they’re barely drawn. Excusable is Seal’s CIA contact, Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson, “Brooklyn”), who serves as a plot driver, but inexcusable is Seal’s long-suffering wife, Lucy (Sarah Wright, “Marry Me”), who is given so little to do, it’s as if second-time screenwriter Gary Spinelli (“Stash House”) hasn’t paid attention to years and years of disappointment and anger over poorly written female roles. Lucy gets angry with Barry at first, and then takes the ride for the money, and we know nothing of how she’s really feeling. The problem is that while antecedents of “American Made” are well directed and acted on top of a compelling story, “American Made” can only claim the last of those attributes. Doug Liman, the otherwise competent but not outstanding director behind “The Bourne Identity” and the more recent Cruise action film “Edge of Tomorrow,” is the weak link here. Handed on a plate an absurdly great plot, Liman mangles his film with utterly bizarre filmmaking choices. In order to ape the sort of faux documentary style promulgated by “The Big Short” and “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Liman features a number of cut-aways to photographs and historical footage, but none help move the story along. Cinematographer César Charlone (“Blindness”) escalates the shaky camera work of “The Big Short” to something much more dizzying, if not nauseating, though sometimes. The worst offense is a seemingly absent understanding of how shots ought to be constructed. Charlone’s cinematography is beyond chaotic: it’s an assault on spatial logic. It’s hard to describe, but the best analogy at hand currently is if the director were a spastic eight-year-old given a 35mm camera and instructed to make a two-hour film in just as much time. All the more stranger is that Tom Cruise, one of the biggest movie stars of all time, appears in nearly every slipshod frame. Liman may have been visually uninteresting before, but with “American Made” he verges into visual repugnancy. “American Made” Universal Pictures Ann Arbor 20, Quality 16 DANNY HENSEL Daily Arts Writer SALVATORE DIGIOIA, DAILY ARTS WRITER/DAILY On A$AP Mob tour, Rocky is a circus ringmaster When Yams and Bari first launched A$AP Mob more than a decade ago, their vision expanded well beyond the boundaries of rap: Together, the duo recruited a diverse collective of creative-types and took critical early steps to broadcast their Harlem-gone- Hollywood style. Both imagery and aesthetic were vital to the Mob’s branding from the start, with fashion adding an extra vehicle through which music could be marketed. From this tradition stemmed popular hits, buzzy streetwear labels and short films, projects that often feel disconnected creatively, yet are united by their now-famous mantra. But what exactly is the A$AP mantra, if not solely a promotional prop? It was once natural to view the group as a tight-knit fraternity, its members a #rare blend of neighborhood connections who, for obvious reasons, found it mutually beneficial to link and build beneath a common alias. Since Yams’s heartbreaking passing in 2015, though, unity among its members has felt opportunistic: It’s difficult to imagine Rocky — the Mob’s staple A-list celebrity, who models for Dior and has dated a Jenner — hanging out with his old pals when business isn’t involved. Plus, the addition of an out-of-towner — Atlanta’s Playboi Carti — best known for revitalizing East Coast hip-hop is rather diluting of its ethos. Amid this mild identity crisis, A$AP Mob has released a new crew tape — Cozy Tapes Vol. 2: Too Cozy — and launched a North American tour. Both ventures aim to satisfy (or at least quiet) fans’ hunger for new music from Rocky, who has not released a solo album in almost three years. Yet, despite the rapper’s natural role as the traveling circus’s ringmaster, he is not its exclusive headliner: The Too Cozy Tour exists to bring lesser-watched members of A$AP — such as Twelvyy, who also released a solo album in #Awgest (read: August) — into fully packed theaters nationwide. It’s in this vein that A$AP Mob arrived at Detroit’s Masonic Temple on Fri., Sept. 29th, luring a flood of mostly college and late-high-school- aged kids downtown for a full night of hip-hop-inspired mosh pits. By 8:00 p.m., the general admission pit’s crowd was already spilling over its brims, its tightly-packed (and mostly intoxicated) attendees screaming along as recent hits like “Bodak Yellow” and “XO Tour Llif3” helped pass the time. Once A$AP Nast emerged on stage, the show was underway. Despite lacking depth in his discography, Nast is a profound technical rapper true to the spirit of New York, and his performances of boom- bap tracks “Nasty’s World” and “Trillmatic” allowed him to prove so. He was followed promptly by A$AP Twelvyy, who — coming off the heels of his long-overdue debut LP, 12 — used his time to perform gritty solo cuts that wouldn’t otherwise fit into the night’s turnt-up setlist. After opening with “Periodic Table,” Twelvyy warned Detroiters to “put (their) guns up,” then dove into ammunition-themed anthem “Strapped,” which was followed by “Ea$t$ideGho$t.” Before rapping the latter, he proudly announced that the Mob has been visiting the city since its inaugural touring effort —the Long Live A$AP Tour — in 2013, a notion that morbidly dated their joint shenanigans, at least slightly. He then closed with the inspiring “LYBB (Last Year Being Broke),” earning consistent feedback during its choruses, and departed from the stage, only to return shortly thereafter. When A$AP Mob finally stormed the stage as a troop, walking out to epilepsy- inducing flashes and the explosive “Yamborghini High,” it was Rocky who stood front and center, briefly by his lonesome, with an Off-White belt dangling in his trail, holding up paint-splattered jeans. In the background were two Lamborghini vehicles, parked and converted into luxury DJ booths, plus a parade of his cohorts, acknowledging of their sidekick statuses. Though the songs performed across the next hour came mostly from the group’s joint projects (“Telephone Calls” and “Crazy Brazy” off the first Cozy Tapes; “Blowin’ Minds,” “Black Card” and many more from the second), Rocky managed to maintain the spotlight throughout, acting as a master of ceremonies. Before “Please Shut Up,” he set the tone by asking the crowd: “How many people got that boss or parent that y’all just want to smack the shit out of?” Then, backtracking only slightly, added: “But they got this thing called the law… So, if you don’t wanna go to jail, you can calmly, politely ask that person…” “Please shut up!” the crowd gleefully roared in response. “Bahamas” received a similarly enticing introduction, with Rocky probing fans to open up mosh pits through teases like, “Y’all niggas ain’t ever been to a A$AP Mob concert?” It was followed by Twelvyy’s “Hop Out,” then a brief ode to Ferg, who skipped Detroit despite being an otherwise regular part of the tour. Even when sharing the spotlight, though, Rocky remained in total control, earning the night’s most emphatic reactions during his a cappella lead-ins to songs such as “Multiply” and “Feel So Good.” Appropriately, “Get That Bag” — which features all members of A$AP Mob — was one of the night’s final songs. However, as if the show simply could not end without a total acknowledgement of Rocky’s core status, it was followed by a raucous solo cut of his. “We are not letting this nigga A$AP Rocky leave this stage. He’s too hot!” said someone, it barely matters who. Sure enough, Rocky swiftly returned for a final verse, one which everyone was expected to know. “Who the jiggy nigga with the gold links?” Who else but Lord Pretty Flacko Jodye, the leader — and still the primary selling point — of the entire A$AP Mob? SALVATORE DIGIOIA Daily Arts Writer DO YOU LIKE ALL THINGS FASHION & LIFESTYLE? LIKE PRETENTIOUSLY RUMINATING OVER YOUR FAVORITE BOOKS AND AUTHORS? Daily Arts is looking to bring on new writers to their Style and Book Review beats! Email arts@michigandaily.com for an application. FILM REVIEW CONCERT REVIEW 6 — Thursday, October 5, 2017 Arts The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com